Diary of a Vegetarian

Schiphol, end of June. Two lorries get stopped by the Dutch police. Alarmed by the awful stench emanating from them, they decide to check the contents. Inside, they discover thousands of neglected animals, birds, deer and kangaroos, of which only 1,300 could be saved.

The transportation of live animals. It makes my stomach turn. Every time I drive past one of them, I can't help but wonder what's going on inside and what state the animals are in. And because I have a vivid imagination, it's never good.

A quick poll amongst some my carnivore friends told me I’m not the only one who feels that way.

“They look like prisons on wheels.”

“It shouldn’t be allowed. I mean, it’s not nice, is it?”

One of my friends remembered an incident from when she was a child:

"We drove past one of those lorries once when a pig poked its snout through the bars. It looked so sweet. I didn't eat pork for weeks!"

“But you started eating it again?”

“Well, yes. Anyway, you don’t see transportation of live animals that often nowadays. And at least vans transporting meat aren’t as offensive.”

This, I think, is what separates meat eaters from vegetarians. To me it makes no difference if a lorry carries dead meat or live animals. You may argue that the first is more humane but in the end, the result is the same. Dead animals are merely one step closer to consumption. And it’s only thanks to a cunning thing called marketing that the transportation of meat is less offensive. Just pay attention next time one of these trucks drives past. The type of meat they are carrying is usually depicted on the outside of the lorry, but not in a realistic way. You never see a picture of a bloody carcass splashed across the body of a van.

If the lorry is transporting, say, pork you get a picture of a Porky Pig lookalike. The pig is holding up a knife and fork, has a serviette tied around its neck and is smiling and licking its chops in anticipation of ... of what? Eating pork chops? Think about it. How absurd is that? Chickens are another favourite source of inspiration. One of the best - or worst - I've ever seen, was a picture of a chicken dressed like a proper chef, complete with polkadot apron and chef’s hat. The chicken was proudly holding up a dish with a big fat drumstick on it.

The message from these animals is clear: eat us! We’re delicious! We’d eat ourselves if we could! And it obviously works because in the mind of non veggies, that makes it ok to consume them.

You get the opposite effect when animals all of a sudden are seen as creatures who have their own personality. It’s what happened after the huge success of the film “Babe”. For a while, people and especially kids, stopped eating pork. And while the effects may not be lasting, in some cases it could be the first step to becoming a vegetarian. It worked in my case.

I remember one day, I must have been about eight or nine, my dad had the brilliant idea of growing our own chickens.

“No more supermarket stuff wrapped in styrofoam and cellophane! The real taste of homegrown meat!”

The next weekend, I helped him build a chicken coop in the back of our garden. And sure enough, a couple of days later he turned up with six chickens. They were very young, fluffy and white and they looked tiny in the enormous coop. My brother and I fed them everyday after school and soon they all had names. Tommy, Jimmy, Chip, etc… We could even tell them apart.

Then came the dreaded Saturday when they were turned into “meat”. My brother and I stayed in all day, not wanting to face the carnage. The day after, my mum locked herself in the kitchen for hours, preparing an historic Sunday dinner for the whole family. It was historic alright. We sat there staring into our plates for minutes until my dad asked what was wrong and my brother uttered the unforgettable words that until this day are repeated at every family reunion:

"I'm just trying to work out whether this is Tommy or Jimmy..."

It was my dad’s one and only attempt to grow our own meat. And while I did go back to eating anonymous supermarket chickens for a while, I still see that day as my first step towards becoming a vegetarian.